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Houston area law enforcement agency is prepared to launch an unmanned drone that could someday carry weapons, Local 2 Investigates reported Friday.

The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office in Conroe paid $300,000 in federal homeland security grant money and Friday it received the ShadowHawk unmanned helicopter made by Vanguard Defense Industries.

In the span of just three years, we have seen drone surveillance become openly operational on American soil.

In 2007, Texas reporters first filmed a predator drone test being conducted by the local police department in tandem with Homeland Security. And in 2009, it was revealed that an operation was underway to use predator drones inland over major cities, far from “border control” functions. This year it has been announced that not only will drone operations fly over the Mexican border, but the United States and Canada are partnering to cover 900 miles of the northern border as well.

Yesterday, V-Day, the Public Protection Committee of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors held a public hearing in Oakland, CA on a request from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office to purchase a surveillance Drone, which would make my County the first in California to acquire it’s own local Drone. Of course Sheriff Ahern insisted that the Board of Supervisors refer to it as a “small Unmanned Aerial System” and not a “Drone.” He also objected to the term “surveillance” preferring ”observation.” As if there’s a difference.

According to an Albany City Council member, the Albany Police Department has decided to back out of an agreement with Berkeley Police Department and UCPD to purchase an armored vehicle through a federal grant.

The $170,000 federal grant to purchase a Lenco BearCat will come from the Urban Areas Security Initiative, a Department of Homeland Security nonprofit organization that is intended to financially support agencies that are at high risk of a terrorist attack with “security enhancements.”...

By that time, Sheriff Janke, with the help of the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Air Force, had already run the table where “non-lethal” means of compelling the family to surrender were concerned. This included everything from the Taser used during Brossart’s June 23 arrest to the precedent-setting use of a Predator-B drone to conduct surveillance of the home several days later to facilitate the arrest of the farmer’s three sons.

With the announcement that a Remotely Piloted Aircraft (drone) command center will open at the Horsham Air Guard Base (located in Montgomery county, Pennsylvania) in October local activists from all parts of the political spectrum came together and swung into action. On April 27, 2013 about one hundred protesters marched to the base's main gate and held a rally they called Drone Free Horsham.

The Bearcat used by the Seacoast Emergency response Team (SERT) which is an armored personnel vehicle stationed at the Rye Safety Complex.

Earlier this year, a North Dakota sheriff was on the search for six missing cows. He turned up with a warrant at a family ranch, but was chased off by someone with a rifle, reports the Los Angeles Times. So he called in back-up, including a drone from Border Patrol, to search the family’s 3,000-acre ranch for the armed suspects. The drone used its sensors to find them and to determine they were unarmed. Police then arrested the family of six, marking the first known use of a drone to arrest U.S. citizens, reports the Times.

The death of innocent bystanders in foreign nations has been accepted in a very nonchalant manner.... But again, will we be so nonchalant if we frame this question in the light of homeland drone strikes? Will we care so little if it is our own schools and children being blown away by disconnected men hundreds or thousands of miles away?